Anna in Yakut dress
 

"Anna in traditional Yakut dress",
oil/canvas/wood,
20"/24", 50cm/65cm
4 months of work...
Still might work on it,
but I think it's almost finished :)

Oh my word! You're not what I would call lazy! It's nothing but astonishing. I am not sure what more you would work on except, perhaps, enticing her to actually step out of the canvas to greet us. What most appealing is that it is so finished and yet the brushmarks are not at all tight. A supreme effort, and just waiting to win a fortune in art competition prizes!

Wow!

absolutely stunning... I love the skin tonal range and those eyes. You certainly stepped up the bar with this work.

What impressing gaze !
Thanks for sharing...

Dear Sergio,

I have really missed you here! This is a gorgeous piece, not as if that is any surprise.

I think this portrait is fulminant with your style, compelling, and I love seeing it.

PS This probably feels like a "miniature" to you. :)

For newer Forum members, please take the time to search all of Sergio's posts. I promise you will not be disappointed.

Oh my Sergio!

Teach me to paint!!!



Dianne

Sergio, this is just amazing. It's a delight to the eyes
Ilaria

Sergio,

You would have given Roger van der Weyden a run for his money.
Absolutely impecable!
So if my calculations are correct, it must have taken you 1 week to do that eye?

Many congratulations!

Sergio,

I am beyond words in awe! This is an astonishingly wonderful portrait, and I will be surprised if it gets anything less than top PSOA honors in Philadelphia, next May! I'd love an opportunity to see this. Congratulations in advance!


Garth

Sergio,
I like it, it's a very strong portrait and the textures are so rich. Could you tell a bit about the model? Are the Yakut's a Polar tribe?

Dear Thomasin,

I'm waiting for that fortune since too long
to be really interested in it :)
As for the competitions,
do you think those who judge us are better than we are?

Actually I loved your nude paintings,
there is something innocent and astonishing in them...

Best regards Sergio

:) I agree,
I like my work.

I wanted to create something perfect.
So I gave myself as much time as i needed...
The bar was set up not in function of the technique
but in function of the emotion which the viewer
had to feel meanwhile in front of it.

Thanks for the comment,
loved your charcoal, sanguine mix
very surprising!

You don't need to be taught...
Your mountain landscapes shows that you have everything a painter need to progress by yourself. (the arch)
Technical progression will come by itself with a lot of work
and other's advices can sometimes only harm...

I prefer it to be a delight to the soul.
Loved your lobster!

More or less one week yes
although hard to calculate
there are around 4-5 layers on each eye,
between each layer 2 days of drying
the color tissue of the eye is made with the trembling of my hands...

Liked your still life with the mandarins...
Sometimes big surfaces are taking away our attention from the essential... :)

Thank you Garth! Hope to see you then in person again!

The idea with the texture was to diversify it to the minimum
so that the essence of the model would shine through the painting
without being disturbed "by" the painting itself...

So I would say, there was basically no work on the texture,
the effort was made on a kind of mystical presence of the person in front of you...

My brother, when he looked at it,
stayed with his mouth open for a few minutes... so surprising was the human (or inhuman) presence of Anna...

That picture of my brother glazing with his open mouth
(it's very hard to astonish him, he's a phlegmatic lawyer)
I think was the best recompense for me from the picture till now...
Although I believe that the "Yakut" roots of the model
(Yakutia is the land where all the shamans, mammoth bones and diamonds are of Siberia see the attachment of a typical yakut dress) must bring me more unexpected stuff...

As for the model...
Huh.
It's a whole story... Too long to talk about it.

Hello Chris!

Don't forget that even my monumental pieces were always made like miniatures...

PS: Always astonished by your productivity in portraits!

Sergio,

You are one of the few artists who can use your meticulous rendering to capture life instead of freezing the life out of the person. I'm so impressed! Her staring eyes are compelling and a bit daunting, but I think it's their totally unexpected blue color that makes me want to find out more about her. The combinaton of expresion, facial features and costume seems somehow incongruous, as if she is an odd mixture of cultures. Very intriguing. I'd love to know a little bit about how you came to paint her.

Beautiful colors and textures, Sergio. What a delight. Her gaze is fascinating - I've come to look at her again and again. Thanks for sharing.

Sergio, I really enjoy your honest appreciation of your own work! I also really enjoyed your firefighter piece that was selected for a recent BP Portrait award, very much. So moving, and so wonderfully designed. I also like that you are so proud of being a firefighter as well as an artist. You're so cool!

Sergio, I have missed seeing you around as well and I love your comeback - you absolutely knocked my socks off with this stunning piece!

I have always admired how you get those eyes so life-like and now I can feast my eyes on the wonderful textures you have created. Nice to have you back!

Sergio
 

?

!

Dear Alexandra,

Thank You for so many precise an clearsighted remarks.
Concerning the "freezing the life out of a person":
Well... basically I must say you that IT WAS LITERALLY HOW I MET ANNA.
Besides being a fireman I also organized in my past survival trips in the Siberian Taiga for rich businessmen in hunger of adrenaline. One of the trip turned out to be a REAL survival, and freezing almost to death in the snow I prayed God:
"Let me get out of this and I promise I will paint 25h per day"
So...then suddenly when all hope left us:
...in the milky fog and the snow ...in front of us behind the trees ...a pair of shining blue eye appeared... ...that of a husky dog ...and then ...and then ...of ANNA
with a huge, absolutely gorgeous, unbelievably desirable
hot cup of tea in her hand... :)

apologies
 

An absolutely stunning piece Sergio, since viewing your firemen drawing you are one of the artist I try to emulate in my drawings and now after viewing this work also in my paintings.

Hope you will forgive my earlier comment, I was only trying to be jocular, by stating something that was I thought would be interpreted as humorous, as it was obvious to me that this painting is nothing short of perfect in it's execution.

Thanks Lisa,

Loved your orange juice still life!
Became thirsty looking at it,
it was so real!

Nice to see you too Enzie,

So much new work on your site!
Stunned by the "Funky hat"!!!
And the Work in Progress of Blue Tribe is clever,
USING EXACTLY the same technique!

Thanks Thomasin again for enthusiastic notices,
The piece at the National Portrait Gallery in London was definitely an adventure... I had to brake 8 doors in my art studio to get it out...
And now I have to get it in again.

Sergio--

It's great to see you back on the Forum pages...

This piece is magnificent!

Best as always--TE

(I think of you often, as I still have the PFD medal on my keychain.)

Sergio, you're back, and with another spectacular painting! This is a remarkably haunting and magnetic painting and of course your technique is beyond compare (as usual). I loved your story of Anna.

What a treat to see your work again, please post some more soon. :)

Hellllllllo Linda! Nice to see you too...
Loved your painting: Dusk or Dawn! Very sensual.

The story about Anna is true (except may be the cup of tea:
there was a plastic, half broken, ugly Chinese thermos instead).

The cloths of Anna, are the cloths of her grand grand grand mother,
who was the wife of a very famous Yakut poet from the 19th century: Kulakovsky. That is why the kind of strange stylistic: 150 years ago even folkloric robes were influenced by city-fashion.

The Huskies aren't exact either. Instead: there was a completely lazy and terribly slow Yakut horse, which in fact was used by Scott when he tried to reach the Pole South before Amundsen. Certainly it was the reason of his death and failure, cause the Yakut horses did not eat fish-rests (and in addition were eaten themselves by Scott).

The blue eyes of the Huskies however are definitely an important part of the story of this painting cause when we finally arrived at the Yakut camp of Anna...
(who if you understood the situation correctly was a kind of "Taiga Firefighter" in the Summer and "Survival Tourist Saver" in the winter)
...so when we arrived... I was horribly impressed with the similitude of her eyes with the eyes of the Huskies....

...and and THIS WAS THE ORIGIN of my desire to paint her portrait!

Great thanks Tom for your appreciation,
Still consider your Admiral as a masterpiece...
As for my French Foreign Legionnary past:
only that key ring left which you talk about...
...and that small little fresco.

A small sight in my art studio :)
You can see a little bit the inside kitchen of how the painting was made.
I've completely forgot to say:
I did around 1300 photos of the model
before I started to paint...

Yup, I have been busy, that's for sure! :)

Sergio, I love the background behind your painting. I followed with great interest what you have been experiencing and how this painting came to be.

I had to laugh when I saw your computer set up. I need to show your keyboard placement to my family, so they once and for all stop complaining about my set up. I do have a question for you. I noticed you have taken close-up shots of your model with different skin tones. Can you tell me why you did that? Are you keying up different areas to get more color information out of the original?

I so have to take a tutorial by you how to paint eyes! ;)

Hello Enzie,

The different prints are for playing with the cold warm contrast on the face. I think it is the most difficult part to obtain in a portrait. The computer is there, but basically I don't work from it if have enough prints... after a while my eyes just cannot apprehend a computer screen image as a source to resolve a problem on the portrait.
I would even say, sometimes, the worst is the photo the more interesting is it to work after it on a portrait... and clearly: no photo can replace the original model sitting for you hours and hours!

:)

Sergio, your work and your attitude are a breath of fresh air. This is wonderful! I can tell from what you say, and from the painting, that you paint and live straight from your soul.
Amazing work.